Rhapsody in Blue
August 22, 2008 8:23 AM   Subscribe

In Praise of Melancholy. Is happiness overrated in America, as opposed to, say, in Japan, where Big Pharma had to promote a neologism -- kokoro no kaze, i.e., the cold you catch in your soul -- to market antidepressants to a culture that regards the sadness of mujo (the transient nature of things) as an essential element of beauty and a crucial part of leading a full human life?
posted by digaman (30 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Turn that frown three hundred and sixty degrees around. -- cortex



 
Previously
posted by DU at 8:27 AM on August 22, 2008


sigh. I'm going back to bed.
posted by stavrogin at 8:28 AM on August 22, 2008


without following any of the links ....... Yes.
posted by mannequito at 8:28 AM on August 22, 2008


This makes me sad.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:35 AM on August 22, 2008


Not that there's anything wrong with that.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 8:36 AM on August 22, 2008


I don't know that happiness is overrated, but Americans ( meaning some proportion of the tiny number that I've met, and the small fragment of the massive US cultural output that I'm familiar with) often seem to me to have a sense of entitlement that you don't really see anywhere else.

I've often wondered what it was that produced this: is it the advertising and consumer society? Is it the bit in the constitution about the pursuit of happiness? Is it the national mythology, that teaches people they really *can* have it all, log cabin to Whitehouse style, so if you don't have every aspect of the American dream, you're a terrible failure and so should be miserable.

But don't worry, we can fix that with antidepressants!

I think there's definitely been some sort of expansion of what people think of as depression, when, in the past, states regarded as too trivial to be worthy of discussion, today warrant huge emounts of time and energy expended on 'fixing' them. And it feels as though that process is driven from the USA, while the rest of the world is dragged along in its wake.

But having said all that, I don't think there's any glory or growth that comes out of depression, and I do think people who have it should fix it. I suppose one of the bigger contradictions in the American national psyche -- again, as seen from the outside -- is the contradiction between that puritanical impulse that says 'Suffering is good, without pain you can have no growth, antidepressants are cheating because they short circuit the learning process you get from five years of in-depth therapy', and the consumerist, self-gratifying impulse that says, 'I shouldn't feel any discomfort whatsoever. Fix me now, whatever it takes! Happiness uber alles!'
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:37 AM on August 22, 2008 [4 favorites]


Nice article. In our species, moodiness is essential to technological and social progress. It's easy to understand why, too: if we were never unhappy, we'd never be motivated to do anything but sit around and grin. That I'm a moody, sometimes cranky guy keeps driving me forward and making new things.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:42 AM on August 22, 2008


"sadness" is not clinical depression, a disease. Jesus fucking Christ.

Japan also regards pretty much everyone not a Japanese male as less than human. There are many admirable things about Japan, but as far how to be "happy," i can't think of anyone I'd want to emulate less than contemporary urban Japanese.
posted by drjimmy11 at 8:46 AM on August 22, 2008


I've often thought about this — why is it now that so many people are on mood-enhancing drugs and seeking counseling when life 100+ years ago seemed to be much harder and more stressful.

I find it difficult to believe that our cozy technology-fueled existence is that much more woeful than, say, that of my great-grandparents, who made the Oklahoma land run, were cotton farmers in the South, and constantly had to deal with death, struggle and the unbridled forces of nature.

Is it because our standard of "happpiness" and what makes a life worth living has changed so drastically?*

This is not a rhetorical question. I am genuinely curious...
posted by Brittanie at 8:47 AM on August 22, 2008


Maybe the US happy-face fetish is part of the same mindset that insists everyone is above average. Life has its ups and downs but let's eliminate the downs, eh?
posted by binturong at 8:53 AM on August 22, 2008


if we were never unhappy, we'd never be motivated to do anything but sit around and grin

Max Weber obviously had it wrong: his thesis should have been titled 'The Moodiness Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism'
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:58 AM on August 22, 2008


100 years ago you could also get a bottle of Laudanum at the general store for a nickel.
posted by destro at 9:02 AM on August 22, 2008 [3 favorites]


Also: are there any active sociologists out there? I'm curious as to how the field feels about Weber, given what we know today about the work ethic of Koreans and the Chinese given a situation where they can actually profit from their efforts? Does the theory simply become a tool for explaining the conditions for growth of Capitalism at that particular historical juncture?

It's a long time since I read Protestant Ethic, but the last twenty years or so would appear to have called much of it into question, no?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:06 AM on August 22, 2008


In a coincidence, I was just watching a documentary on IFC about this.
posted by fixedgear at 9:07 AM on August 22, 2008


Brittanie said: why is it now that so many people are on mood-enhancing drugs and seeking counseling when life 100+ years ago seemed to be much harder and more stressful

Refined white flour and sugar fucks with all kinds of serotonin, beta-endorphin, and blood-sugar variables. Our irresponsible diets probably have something to do with it, and would go a long way toward explaining the gap between us and both our own past and other cultures.
posted by jock@law at 9:09 AM on August 22, 2008


Like everything else in life, happiness is transient. In general, America is hostile to transients. Ergo, although we usually make a show of tossing off our spare change to happiness, we don't really trust it, and certainly wouldn't want it sleeping in our neighborhoods.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:09 AM on August 22, 2008


100 years ago you could also get a bottle of Laudanum at the general store for a nickel.

It was the good shit, too. Not like today's Laudanum, all cut with Ipacec and Capsicum oil to force you to moderate your consumption.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:09 AM on August 22, 2008


Another classic of the genre: Philip Lopate's brilliant essay, "Against Joie de Vivre" (Best. Title. Evar.)


"Ah, what a twinkle in the eye the old man has! He'll outlive us all." So we speak of old people who bore us, when we wish to honor them. We often see projected onto old people this worship of the life-force. It is not the fault of the old if they then turn around and try to exploit our misguided amazement at their longevity as though it were a personal tour de force. The elderly, when they are honest with themselves, realize they have done nothing particularly to be proud òf in lasting to a ripe old age, and then carrying themselves through a thousand more days. Yet you still hear an old woman or man telling a bus driver with a chuckle, "Would you believe that I am eighty-four years old!" As though they should be patted on the back for still knowing how to talk, or as though they had pulled a practical joke on the other riders by staying so spry and mobile. Such insecure, wheedling behavior always embarrassed me. I will look away rather than meet the speaker's eyes and be forced to lie with a smile, "Yes, you are remarkable," which seems condescending on my part and humiliating to us both.

posted by digaman at 9:09 AM on August 22, 2008 [3 favorites]


When I was a little boy, my mother used to sing me a song. It went like this: "Life is short, life is shit, and soon it will be over."

It sounds better in the original Croatian.
posted by FatherDagon at 9:11 AM on August 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


As I said the last time this was posted: Christ, what bullshit.
posted by languagehat at 9:12 AM on August 22, 2008


I've often found the American mindset to be the pursuit of your own happiness, with all of the individualist rhetoric in tow, while some of the Eastern cultures I'm familiar with have a more community-based mindset - the pursuit of happiness for you and your family, or you and your community. To be focused solely on your own happiness is a supremely narcissistic and selfish endeavor. No such stigma exists in much of America, I think. And ultimately the "you're on your own" flipside of this is very isolating. Combine this with the replacement of any sense of beauty, transquility, creativity or spirituality with a mind-numbing, all-pervasive materalism - well, it's no wonder so much of the Western world (and the parts of the Eastern world influenced by it) have a kind of empty feel to them.
posted by naju at 9:12 AM on August 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


As someone who has experienced clinical depression in many of its forms, I firmly believe that melancholy and depression really are two different things.

I do creative work (music, songwriting, have done painting in the past, etc etc) and melancholy indeed has its uses as a muse. All depression does is keep you from working, period.

Melancholy is not always unpleasant, while depression most certainly is either extremely umpleasant, or numbing.
posted by konolia at 9:25 AM on August 22, 2008 [6 favorites]


Life, liberty and the pursuit of ... pills to make you 'normal.'

Joy is better than gloom, though.
Though gloom can be pretty cool, and makes joy that much better!

But don't you just gotta invite in the dark winds, the hellhounds, the duende, the sidhe sometimes?

I mean, dude, like, everything's like so relative, dude.

And non-holocausts wouldn't be so cool if it weren't for holocausts... wait a second...
posted by punkbitch at 9:30 AM on August 22, 2008


konolia, i completely agree.
posted by punkbitch at 9:34 AM on August 22, 2008


You will never have peace until you embrace being sad.

Give up all hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated.

Relax with the groundlessness of your situation.

This is the first step on the path.
posted by Zambrano at 9:35 AM on August 22, 2008 [2 favorites]



Is it just a cowinkydink that profitable mind altering drugs are legal but the other kind, you know, grow/do it yourself, are illegal?
posted by notreally at 9:36 AM on August 22, 2008


Melancholy is not always unpleasant, while depression most certainly is either extremely umpleasant, or numbing.
I completely agree. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that melancholy and happiness aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

I think many people feel societal pressures to experience happiness in certain ways, and to attain happiness in specific ways. Because of this, people end up in pursuits that don't actually make them happy, and they don't even know it.

On the other hand, depression is something that I am familiar with from the outside. I don't experience it myself, but people important to me do. It's painful and frustrating when someone important to you is miserable without apparent cause, living in a bubble in which nothing is good or right.
posted by trebonius at 9:37 AM on August 22, 2008


Melancholy is not always unpleasant, while depression most certainly is either extremely umpleasant, or numbing.

And don't forget sadness as well. I'd distinguish between a diffuse, non-specific melancholy, and sadness, which is invariably sad -- by definition, in fact. But it's not depression.

On the contrary, it's a reasonable situational response to negative life events like death, the break up of a relationship, etc. Its often very intense, and you may even be dysfunctional during the extreme periods, but the thing about sadness is, it gets gradually better. You might keep some of the pain, but all in all, sadness is a normal, healthy response to the bad things that happen.

Depression is a mental illness. Very occasionally, sadness can trigger depression, but normally, sadness doesn't need treatment. It gets better on its own.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:37 AM on August 22, 2008


Narcissistic man obsesses over his own emotional state, attempts to turn it into an indictment of an entire culture - news at 11:00.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 9:50 AM on August 22, 2008


Brittanie: The primary difference between now and 100 years ago, is that now there are some alternative options for people suffering from mental illness beyond suicide, falling into the criminal justice system, incarceration in insane asylums, self-medication with alcohol, cocaine and opiates, or just plain suffering.

But really I'm feeling that one of the problems behind this entire debate is that our language is sloppy in a way that conflates feeling sad, full of angst, or angry, with varieties of mental illness that are devastating in their ability to cripple people. I have a difficult time expressing the fact that the disorder that triggers barely controllable blind panic over seemingly trivial events like an unexpected car repair is qualitatively different from the flutter in my belly when I walk into an interview. That I don't take a drug therapy to be happy, I take a drug therapy to control symptoms such as chronic headaches, formication, tachycardia, insomnia and obsessive mania.

In fact, I'll argue that mood disorders can get in the way of honest and productive sadness and grief. I'm happy when I experience things that make me happy, I'm sad when I experience things that make me sad. I can't really experience either if I'm flipping out over delusional disasters just around the corner.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:50 AM on August 22, 2008


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